134 days

Violet is 19 weeks old today. I started out knowing nothing. Here are just a few of the lessons I've learned in those 134 days:

- The infant phase, where they sleep in your arms for hours, is so short. It's hard not to spend that little bit of time wishing they would smile or play or do something. Now I worry that I didn't appreciate it quite enough.

- Birth is unbelievably hard on your body. I spent all sorts of time reading about labour and worrying how that would go. That part was not hard for me. (Don't hate me.) But the three weeks after that were brutal. Nobody told me. And it didn't occur to me how painful it would be for my uterus, which had expanded to a thousand times its normal size, to contract back. Those afterpains were worse than contractions for me. And they lasted, like, a week.

- When I made it an event, getting up with her in the middle of the night wasn't so bad at all. For the first couple of weeks, I tried to feed her in bed. That wasn't very comfortable, we woke the Husband up and I would get impatient for her to finish eating, because I couldn't think of any other fun things to look up on my Blackberry. When I started taking her downstairs, where I had laid out a healthy(ish) snack for myself, a glass of water, and had some TV on DVD to entertain me, it was much more palatable. Plus, it was kind of nice to feel like she and I were the only two people awake in the world.

- I am not always good at asking for help. My amazing friends, family and husband know that and never wait for me to ask.

- Watching someone learn is incredible. I never had any desire to be a teacher, but now I throw a parade when Vivi reaches up to bat at a toy or grabs her spoon while I'm feeding her. I am incredibly excited about the millions of milestones still ahead.

-Sleep deprivation is as hard as everyone says it is. What was even worse for me was the anxiety of not knowing how long I would have to sleep. So I would lie there awake, too worried about how little sleep I would get, to actually get any sleep. That was bad. Now Vivi sleeps through the night and I appreciate every single moment.

- I consider myself a well-organized person, but I have had to up my game in order to ever get out of the house with her in tow.

- A year of maternity leave is an incredible luxury and makes me love being a Canadian even more than I already did. However, my grand plans of what to do with my "time off" have had to be altered. After I've fed her, changed her, played with her, coerced her to nap, done a load of laundry, made some meals, fed her, changed her, played with her, gone for a walk while she naps, bathed her, read to her, fed her, changed her, sung to her, put her to bed, I'm done. And so is the day.

- I want her to be happy, healthy and feel loved more than anything else in the whole world.


- And time really does go so, so fast.